I really enjoyed the weird timeline the game had, it felt so cool to figure out what happened when.

Yeah it's an absolute Masterpiece!!! I can't believe how it's not getting any recognition this award season. It feels like we have a time people are more into movies that give us all the answers and no deep layers. The substance and challengers are fine movies, but there are so much on the nose. It's like people don't like to think anymore....

I enjoyed Rise quite a lot, but not as much as Case or its first DLC. I think the revelation that the cases were all connected in the first game was a wonderful "oh shit!" moment, and the formalization of a "do you get it?" puzzle after every set of 3-4 puzzles didn't really do much for me. I also think the big ending twist didn't hit quite as well - partly because there's a lot of built up sympathy for Jack so his face-heel turn kinda comes out of nowhere (and his plan is... dumber than we expect of him). The big bad of Golden Idol 1 had their identity revealed long after they revealed themselves as a total piece of shit, so everyone roots for Peter to take him down. I also feel like the worldbuilding made a little more sense (no ancient Lemurian hard drives) and the puzzles were a little more elegant (less date guessing needed since everything was in chronological order), but it's hard to remember more specifics through rose-tinted glasses. Rise was still an excellent time, but man was this a stacked year for Games of the Year (I just put up my selections on Backloggd and had a hard time choosing). Your point about movie sequels vs video game sequels is pretty interesting, and I think it speaks to how dev teams can think of a million ways to improve their game mechanically - but *narratives* in a sequel are trickier. Most video game sequels completely eschew connected storylines (Zelda, Dark Souls, Silent Hill) and when they don't, the lore baggage can be hysterically overwrought (Metal Gear Solid 4, Resident Evil 6). Rise of the Golden Idol probably didn't hit as hard for me because the first game was already mechanically and narratively sound, so Rise felt like more of a Hollywood sequel in that it couldn't surprise me to the same extent the first game did. Hell, I was even a bit tired of the concept by the second DLC ("The Lemurian Vampire"), which I recall not providing any major new lore or character arcs. Thinking on it, there are a couple other respected arty game followups (Inside, Inscryption, Immortality, Shadow of the Colossus kinda) that don't hit as hard for me as the originals (Limbo, Pony Island, Her Story, Ico). This was also a problem I had with Metaphor Refantazio this year, which - despite having a completely different setting, premise, and battle mechanics - felt like it never surprised me as much as Persona 5 (which itself feels like a pale imitation of Persona 3 at times). And then there's studios like FromSoft where I'm just 100% down for whatever they put out, asset reuse be damned lol. Anyway, Rise of the Golden Idol was definitely snubbed as a nominee for best indie game... I think at least. Jeez there were so many other good ones this year I haven't tried like Lorelai and 1000xResist and UFO 50 and Mouthwashing. But glad you're showing it some love on this cozy corner of the internet.

In my opinion, Lies of P is better than most of the Soulsborne games. As a Souls vet, it took me a long time to admit that. I think FromSoftware gets away with a lot of bad game design just because of who they are. I think Neowiz did a lot of things better than FromSoftware and trimmed the fat off a lot of things to make Lies of P more fun.

1. Lorax 2. Wicked 3. Trap 4. Alone Together

I mean I haven't seen it yet but Wicked seems like an important one this year (much like the original Broadway production - not as beloved by critics but set the world on fire in popularity). I've seen it talked about as the first era-defining movie musical since Chicago.

I think it would be interesting to see a full ranking of all the movies you saw this year as well. Obv going over all of them is excessive but it would be cool to see

I remember my friends and I watching "The Piano" because we watched "The Pianist" and thought it was funny there were two Golden Palm winners about pianos that came out within a decade. While it was engrossing (and funny to learn Jane Campion regretted the "hopeful" ending), I couldn't get over how mean-spirited it felt - both towards the Maori natives and Sam Neill's character (who I remember being portrayed rather sympathetically until the third act). That mean-spirited-ness really hit a new high in Power of the Dog though - fuck what a depressing addition to "groomer" media. IDK if it's her style or something as I've only seen those two Jane Campion movies, but jeez she loves twisting the knife as you learn one of the characters you've been getting invested in is actually a psychopath. Only other one of these I'd seen before was This Is Spinal Tap, and I'm glad to hear it still holds up.

Face🤩

Entirely depends on what sort of film you're talking about, and why the inaccuracy is present. Not all paintings are photorealistic, but even surreal art can be beautiful, context and intent are important. Having the characters in your film hold use bows incorrectly to convey strong emotion, or highlight cooperation or leadership skills, is unnecessary, but benign. You wouldn't notice it unless it were pointed out to you, and noticing it doesn't affect your understanding of the history, or of the story itself. There's no _need_ to misrepresent archery, but doing so in this way is harmless at worst, and can indeed serve the story well if done right. Making a Roman emperor black out of sheer contempt for Europeans and their history is much less defensible. You notice that immediately, you know it's wrong, it completely changes the story, and _wildly_ changes the history that the story is ostensibly based on, it's unnecessary, confusing, disrespectful, it serves nothing and makes the film worse.

Have you seen the art from the middle ages that depicts Caesar and Pompeii duelling (which they never did) in 1400s armour? We've always been bad at depicting the past "accurately"

Oh *that* Gabriel García Márquez - the one whose writing style used exaggerated embellishment to the point of coining the term "magical realism"? Yeah I'm sure he's a trustworthy source on how much ice cream people eat

I have to wonder if directors knowing more about the history they are working with could make the movies worse in some ways since they might focus more on historical accuracy than storytelling

Hell yeah, Moxy dunking on things Ever since La La Land, I've been weary of watching any movie musicals because they always have the issue of leads who can't sing or dance, an ensemble cast who can but hardly gets to showcase it, and a plot that takes itself too seriously and forgets its a musical for at least 40 minutes in the second act. Idk if this movie has those problems, but the scenes you did show don't really have the "fun" you'd expect from a song sequence. To many directors, the idea of characters singing at all is novel enough.

Thank god there is no poison swamps LoP. I hated those in FS games.

🙃

The last seven seconds 🙃

anora was a masterpiece. great video!!

Thoughts on red rocket?

I just read that Lies of P has no pvp and no co-op play. That’s a huge deal killer. PvP is how we activate the improvisational part of our brain, since npc’s are totally predictable and one can learn their move sets down to a T, yet people actually change things up and can provide new challenges. Can’t believe they’d not put the work in to make this game ever-new, through the improvisational unpredictability that pvp brings.

Well one thing is for sure: Poor Things still sucks.

That last one 🎉

Another banger

Love it🎉

Nice bojack clip

Still here, still subscribed. Great vid again, I love leaning into positivity over criticism :)

I just commented on your other video that I appreciate the nice bite-sized 7 minute videos, but this one really felt like it was just the introduction to a needlessly thorough roast of the movie. Gather all your friends, film their reactions, copy Evasive's format of "I made 7 Hipster Portlanders watch Atlas Shrugged", and I unironically think you'd have a viral video on your hands.

I'm always eternally grateful when I see a video essay under 10 minutes these days

If you've ever heard of Clash: Artifacts of Chaos from 2023, i'd wonder what a video on that game from this point of view would be like. Even though as it is, it's a hard game to properly define despite other people claiming it's a soulslike. The protagonist is a pre-established character, combat is oriented around melee and martial arts, the world is not kind but not on the brink of total ruination either. There's the bonfire checkpoints, world design that loops back on itself through shortcuts, light RPG equipment and stat elements plus the healing flasks, but... i don't think it'd fit as being a "soulslike". It's a weird and special beast worthy of being more known.

boss are not that strong that use to be during launch day. Hard nerfed alot.

Because it's a bit different Souls-like, i tend to call it souls-like-like. But I like it this way. It striped away the hard but annoying things (for me) from similar games, left only hard but enjoyable things. For this reason I felt like it really understands what gamers are (or at least I'm) looking for. To the point that I don't want to even use summons for boss fights, because having my ergo left at the door when I die and not having to go through half of stage again and again to try again with the boss felt respectful of my experience, so I wanted to respect the boss fights and experience them they way I thought they should be experienced. Does it even make sense?

Lies of p is setting in the fairy tale world, so it kinda make sense... You didn't play as a random undead, You're Pinocchio the hero of the tale. And talk about world setting compare to Bloodborne this game is less realistic more colorful feel a bit like bioshock infinite to me

Lies of P has extremely minimal stun locks, no input reading and very little moments where the player is killed in 1 or 2 hits. The intricacies of the formula are all still there, however. There's a lot more that goes into why the game is an overall improvement but this is generally what made the game a lot more enjoyable for me.

The director just put out a letter that amounts to "they're working on it" funnily enough, and the lack of concrete details has me less optimistic about the DLC releasing this year. Still very much looking forward to it! Also funny is I'm playing through Dark Souls II SotFS for the first time, and hearing "bullshit Anor Londo archers in DS1 and 3" sounds rich in comparison to some of the projectile enemy spam in this game... I've enjoyed most of it way more than the disaster its critics paint it as, but there are definitely some moments that go beyond the "game laughing at you" phenomenon you discuss in the video and feel more like haphazard cruelty. Interesting to see how FromSoftware has developed that comedic balance over time. I definitely think Lies of P has *some* funny traps - the terrifying joker puppet busting through walls, the hulking opera house actors in silly sailor outfits, the giant monkeys that try to headbonk you. I also feel like Gemini and the King of Riddles were *intended* to be comedic relief, but humor is hard to translate and their lines come off as unnecessary or annoying in English (I wonder how their dialogue would be received in native Korean). But I'd agree that there's an overall less sadistic and more hopeful tone. Contrasting DS2's Emerald Herald with Lies of P's Sophia it's interesting how Lies of P has an ergo explanation for all of its wild phenomena and makes our helper a key part of the narrative whereas DS2 follows dream logic when the Emerald Herald shows up in random places with little relevance to the plot. When DS2 feels incongruous enough to be labeled a black sheep, it still feels undeniably FromSoft - and it's nice to see another dev take their template and make it their own.

I actually played through Virginia this week after you mentioned it again, so this was an appreciated video in the sub box! Especially since there were several details I missed in my playthrough - though one thing I'm still confused about is why was that teenager so hostile? Why give Anne the middle finger and throw away Marie's locket? Was it just racism? Or a red herring? Or were the teenagers trying to cover up their involvement in Lucas' disappearance? Or just trying to protect his legacy? It's interesting to see a Silence of the Lambs-style protagonist abandon the corrupt institution she's a part of, rather than break the glass ceiling only to perpetuate that corruption. Anne will never be able to ameliorate her past sins, but at least she was able to get out and start to mend things with Marie. I can't help but read that part of the ending as hopeful, even if the corruption persists and Lucas' fate remains unsolved. The hitchhiking teenager at the end points towards the hope that Lucas was able to escape his stifling and toxic home life. Or perhaps more morbidly the scene with the UFO suggests that Lucas is more at peace in the afterlife with Judith. Actually, after writing that out I think your pessimistic reading might make more sense lol. I enjoyed my time with the game as it really felt like the feature-length version of Thirty Flights that I'd always dreamed of, but I have to admit I was disappointed with how dour the whole thing was. Part of that is my personal proclivity preferring some levity in my interactive media (since any player friction - like when I couldn't find the next progress point in the bar scene and just kept ogling the nonplussed patrons - can undercut the emotional weight of a scene), but I think that also speaks to why so many players find optimism in the ending. After a draining two hour play session, you can't help but try to read some hope into things.

Is good

good

Well, this video made me finally download Elden Ring so congrats

0:51 Did you just call the Souls series "metroidvanias"? Why?

It seems everyone that disliked Elden Ring for repeated content *really* hates open world games in general. Having played Breath of the Wild and Ghost of Tsushima before Elden Ring, I went in expecting loads of repeat content and was pleasantly surprised how fresh they kept things and how little they reused assets compared to other open worlds. I honestly didn't even notice that Shadow of the Erdtree doesn't repeat as much content in a way that would satisfy those naysayers like yourself - I actually came out of it mildly disappointed that they only had two or so large scale legacy dungeons compared to the six or so in the main game. I felt like Elden Ring was really smart with its single duplicate fights like Godrick 2 or Astel 2 or Latenna 2 even Ancestor Spirit 2, as I had put so many hours into the game between the points at which I found the original boss and their duplicate that in any *other* game I'd already be on NewGame+, so they felt like NewGame 1.5 fights. Plus the ending boss gauntlet still provides a lot of original bosses to close things on a novel note. Interestingly Shadow of the Erdtree ends on closer to a repeat fight than the base game (that's not really fair lol, but the lore around that final fight just left a yucky taste in my mouth.) Overall I enjoyed the DLC a lot but it didn't knock it out of the park for me in the way that past DLC's like Old Hunters and Ringed City did. Belurat was really cool but it also felt like the apex of the unique new areas to me, and it was the first one I explored. While Fromsoft DLC's usually produce higher highs than the base game, Stormveil and Leyndell still stand taller than most of Shadow of the Erdtree in my mind. But maybe I'm just reaching my own FromSoft burn-out in the same way a lot of series diehards were burnt out by the time Elden Ring originally released - it sounds like for you your recommendation of the DLC isn't really predicated on it *outdoing* the best parts of the base game, just raising the lowest lows to a place you're happy with. P.S. Max have you tried Lies of P? That one was really fun and felt like a breath of fresh air this past year - plus it's linear as heck (honestly *too* linear which is my only mark against it). Several of its endgame bosses are up there with the best fights of Sekiro/Bloodborne/DS3 though, and I'm super looking forward to its own DLC (whenever they announce that).

Love it

WLF are the good guys Viet Minh were the good guys Palestinians are the good guys

4:08 "And have causes that [come from] her incompetence " as you walk off a cliff is glorious lol That analysis of "Relationship with the world vs. Relationship with the antagonist" is an interesting framework, especially in the context of video game protagonists (who have to at-least-a-little-bit be a player insert character). I recently finished playing Ghost of Tsushima's Iki DLC, and was surprised to find myself genuinely invested in that little side-story content by the end of it (whereas the main story put me to sleep). I could probably write my own video essay on my love-hate relationship with Ghost of Tsushima lol, but the world/antagonist divide is probably a good lens to view my issues with the main game. Jin feels very detached from the beautiful open world as he Zelda-pot-smashes his way through various towns without much reaction to the people living there. The main antagonists are the Mongol invaders, but since Jin doesn't feel that invested in the world it never feels like much is at stake (a key point in the story is how Jin rejects the samurai honor code and appears uninterested in ruling over the island anyway). Jin just has to kill the mongols because they make good cartoonishly-evil sword fodder. But over on Iki Island, Jin's samurai clan is framed as the evil colonizing force that once terrorized the locals, and Jin has to mend relationships with the locals there so that they may combine forces to overcome yet another Mongol threat. The two story threads work in tandem to better integrate Jin into the society he's fighting for *and* make the Mongols more terrifying by directly comparing them to the sins of his own clan, making him confront an internal conflict. As I write all that out I wonder how well-fitting that "world/antagonist" relationship framework works here (especially since a lot is up to interpretation, I've seen some strident Tsushima defenders who love the main story and Jin's relationship to the world and its moral choice system), but it seems like a good jumping off point. Like Mario: what makes him jump? What keeps him in the Mushroom Kingdom, and what is so special about Peach that he routinely puts his life at risk to thwart Bowser's marriage plans? Perhaps this is why Miyamoto so routinely fails as a storyteller /s

8 month hiatus into video combo; one I'm trying to pull off too - I don't know if you remember me; we talked about Iconoclasts back when I made my video on it last year. Glad to see you still thinking about this space!

Interesting thoughts - something I played this year that had me *wishing* for codec entries was Metroid Dread. There was a lot of thought put into the background of scenes and stuff for lore fanatics (later bosses being teased early on), but the overall story is nonsense gibberish and I was wishing for something to bridge that gap into making the canon story more understandable. Have yet to play Metroid Prime, but those games are famous for implementing that sort of thing well. I always heard it was a Japanese trend - with that generation's Paper Mario and Pikmin games *really* delving into fluff enemy descriptions for fun - that Western RPG devs picked up on. Even 13 Sentinels (which I played last year) had a whole 1/3rd of its menu screens dedicated to lore guides to help the player disentangle the convoluted AF plot (and it was great!)

The doom slayer is an avid reader. He was probably mad that you didn't allow him to read all the codices. I added some doom to my latest vid too. The truth about Daisy gets revealed too. Thumbs up for you.

Great content, looking forward to seeing more uploads. You deserve more subs, I think you should use promosm to grow your channel and get more social proof!

really good vidoe, some interesting things you mentioned. if I can make recoment a game, try out Scavenger SV-4, it is a fantatic non tradtional horror game about exporing an dead alien world with a rover while dying of radiation exposure

I really love your description of The Witness as **having** a story, but one where the story is more your internal reflections on the experience. I think that's a distinction I'll have to make in future recommendations. You should definitely play Braid if you want more pretentious Jonathan Blow-isms (though that game actually **does** have a story). Also, finish the challenge I believe in you. You got pretty close back when I was watching. Edith Finch really blew me away with how it incorporated magical realism into a game narrative. It was such a literary experience. I'd love to hear your thoughts on Thirty Flights of Loving, which is an even shorter, low-budget approximation of an action movie that I feel does something similarly wonderful with video game narrative that I'd love to see done in bigger budget titles. Something about first-person control with the cinematography and editing of a film.